September 29, 2018

Legitimacy lost

Comment on Barkley Rosser on ‘Trump Destroys His Favored SCOTUS Nominee’

Blog-Reference

After a long phase of degeneration, the institution of POTUS has now obviously lost the last bit of legitimacy.

After a long phase of degeneration, the institution of SCOTUS currently loses the last bit of legitimacy on the open stage.

We know this from the economist Barkley Rosser. That’s a bit strange, provided one realizes that it is NOT the business of the academic economist to dabble in politics. Politics is the proper business of Political Science. The business of the economist as a scientist is to figure out how the economy works ― not less, not more.

Economists have failed at their mission. They have to this day produced NOTHING of scientific value. The fact is that economists have messed up
• profit theory, for 200+ years,
• microfoundations, for 150+ years,
• macrofoundations, for 80+ years,
• the application of elementary logic and mathematics since the founding fathers.

Economists do not know to this day how the price- and profit mechanism works. The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/formally inconsistent. Because of this, economic policy guidance has NO sound scientific foundation since Adam Smith/Karl Marx.

As we speak, Stephanie Kelton, her academic fellow campaigners, and the hyper-active MMT sales force on social media pull off “one of the greatest cons ever perpetrated on the American people.”#1

MMT is proto-scientific garbage, the Post-Keynesian sectoral balances equation that underlies the whole analytical edifice is provably false but, curiously, the academic economist Barkley Rosser turns his eyes away from his own profession and prefers to comment on the reported sex and drinking scandals of SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Why does a failed/fake economist repeat at great length what everybody knows already from the extensive media coverage and why does he let us know that he does “not feel sorry for Brett Kavanaugh”? Economics is NOT about feelings but about knowledge, NOT about politicians but about the economy.

Academic economics has entirely abandoned scientific standards and integrity. Economists over the whole spectrum from Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy, from Paul Krugman to Brad DeLong to Simon Wren-Lewis to Barkley Rosser to Steve Keen to Lars Syll to Yanis Varoufakis are full-time media clowns and useful political idiots. Academia, too, has become a failed institution.

To recall, political economics has NO legitimacy since the founding fathers: “A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision.” (J. S. Mill) #2, #3

As a matter of principle, it is entirely beyond the capacity of economists to make a valuable contribution to the advancement of humanity because economics has no sound scientific foundations to this day.#4

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


#1 Stephanie and Noah ― economics at the intellectual zero lower bound
#2 The end of political economics
#3 The case for pure economics
#4 For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics/Stupidity/Corruption

***
REPLY to Zachary Smithingell on Oct 3

There is the political sphere and there is the scientific sphere. The political sphere is about agenda-pushing, and the scientific sphere is about knowledge.

In the political sphere, every imbecile is entitled to climb on a soapbox and to vomit the content of his dysfunctional brain all over the place.

In the scientific sphere, people are supposed to contribute something to the growth of knowledge. Scientific knowledge, in turn, is well-defined by material and formal consistency. Confused off-topic blather is NOT appreciated in the scientific sphere.

You certainly agree that Barkley Rosser’s gossip about Mr. Kavanaugh’s beer and sex life has NO economic or scientific content whatsoever. This would be no embarrassment if Barkley Rosser were a talk show host or a yellow press journalist. But Barkley Rosser pretends to be a competent academic economist.

And this is the point: economics claims to be a science and economists claim to be scientists and they communicate this every year loud and clear with the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.

Reality is different: economics is a cargo cult science, economists are fake scientists, and Barkley Rosser as brain-dead blatherer is living proof that academia, too, is a failed institution.

***
REPLY to Mark Bahner on Oct 4

You let the world know on EconoSpeak: “For the record, I did not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton...I voted for Gary Johnson, who was a much better candidate than either Trump or Clinton.”

It is pretty obvious that this statement has zero informational content and is not of any interest to anyone.

So, a Mark Bahner, a Barkley Rosser, an Anonymous, and others are producing pure noise on EconoSpeak. This has NO positive effect whatsoever but only prevents economic debate geting above the level of brain-dead nonsense.

Speculating whether this effect is unintentional or intentional is a pointless exercise. Sticking to the facts as they are, what anyone can learn from the beer-sex-asshole noise on EconoSpeak is that the long march of the lowlifes of all walks of life has reached its logical end. The institutions of POTUS, SCOTUS, and ACADEME have lost their function and legitimacy and have been brought down to a noisy clown wrestling show.

So, EconoSpeak and Barkley Rosser have at least one positive purpose: to provide an indicator of how deep the social shithole has become by now.#1


#1 By the way, with his tortured irony “… you could get support from Egmont if you declare him to be the only person in worl history to have approached economics scientifically, with his theory of profits being an even greater scientific discovery than the discovery of the DNA molecule.” Barkley Rosser unintentionally hit the metaphorical nail. The three macroeconomic axioms (A1) Yw=WL, (A2) O=RL, (A3) C=PX are actually the DNA of economics. They replace the monster-producing Walrasian and Keynesian axioms. This is called evolution in biology and paradigm shift in methodology.

***
REPLY to Barkley Rosser on Oct 5

Every economist knows from the Palgrave Dictionary that Walrasian, Keynesian, Marxian, and Austrian profit theories are false: “A satisfactory theory of profits is still elusive.” (Desai, 2008) So, there is only one interesting question in economics: is the axiomatically founded macroeconomic Profit Law Qm≡Yd+(I−Sm)+(G−T)+(X−M) true?#1

As long as economists have not definitively clarified the concept of profit, economics is not merely a sick proto-scientific joke but a betrayal of the general public. As things stand at the moment, economics has NO scientific legitimacy.

You are on the F-side of the fence. F stands for false. I am on the T-side of the fence. T stands for true. It does not matter how many of your friends and colleagues stand also on the F-side. The number of followers does not make a false theory true.

There is no need to tell the world that you are good friends with Meghnad Desai and Roy Weintraub and that they are on your side. Everybody on your side of the fence shares your fate and will end up at the Flat-Earth Cemetery. There is enough space for the whole of the academe.


#1 Go! ― test the Profit and Employment Law

***
REPLY to Barkley Rosser on Oct 6

You say: “If you go back and reread that long post I put up here about capital and profit that you and I had our longest exchanges about, I clearly states that we did not have clear agreement on the topic, that it remains an open matter of debate.”

No. The matter was settled then.#1

I started the debate with: “The representative economist fails to this day to capture the essence of a capitalist market economy.”

I concluded the debate with: “Barkley Rosser cannot get out of his self-created muddle. Who cannot handle three macro axioms (Yw=WL, O=RL, C=PX), two conditions (X=O, C=Yw), and two definitions (Qm≡C−Yw, Sm≡Yw−C) and UNDERSTAND IMMEDIATELY that Qm≡−Sm, i.e. that business profit and household saving are NEGATIVELY related, is OUT of economics. When the pivotal concept of profit is not properly understood the rest of the analytical superstructure of economics falls apart and there is NO use at all to filibuster about capital and equilibrium. The best the representative economist can do for the welfare of humanity is to get out of the way.”

This is the stupidity feature of all those economists who stand together with you on the F-side of the fence. It is accompanied by the corruption feature. The representative economist violates scientific standards and habitually denies refutation: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (Morgenstern, 1941).

And it is quite obvious why economists habitually violate scientific standards: “… suppose they did reject all theories that were empirically falsified ... Nothing would be left standing; there would be no economics.” (Hands)

To deny refutation, to obscure matters, and to claim that the debate is still open is the modus operandi of economists for 200+ years.#2 This is the reason why economics is a failed science and never rose above the proto-scientific level.#3

The corruption of economists consists of deliberately keeping things in the swamp between true and false where “nothing is clear and everything is possible” (Keynes) The apex of corruption is telling the general public that what they are doing is science and congratulating themselves with the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.

The fundamental concepts of economics are inconsistent for 200+ years. Economics has NO scientific legitimacy.


#1 Economists: scientists or political clowns?
#2 And the answer is NCND ― economics after 200+ years of Glomarization
#3 The biggest scientific mistake of the last centuries, and it has much to do with academic economists